Sheep magazine archive 1: issues 3-9

20
EXPLOITED
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COLONIES OF
EMPIRE
From the 16th century onwards, a number
of European powers competed with each
other to establish colonies in distant parts
of the world – largely in order to control
the profitable trade in raw materials and to
provide new markets for their manufactured
goods – exploitation. By the 19th century,
inspired by a mixture of religion and rank
racism, colonialists had developed an
‘imperial’ ethos, with the high moral purpose
of bringing what they saw as the advantages
of Western civilisation to their ‘primitive’
colonial subjects. Barely disguised under
this veneer, however, ‘grubby’ commercial
interests played a crucial role – exploitation.
Any plan to keep matters as they were
backfired when exposure to Western values
of democracy and equality led the educated
elites in the colonised countries to question
the right of the imperial powers to ‘lord
it’ over them. – giving rise to nationalist
movements and a slow and sometimes
violent process of decolonization in the
second half of the 20th century.
Many now agree that political imperialism
as an aid to exploitation, has merely been
replaced by economic imperialism ... and
that the exploited still languish in penury.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7